The present invention relates generally to transmitting sensor data from a remote device and more specifically to prioritizing sensor data and controlling the transmission of data packets from a mobile device (e.g. a motor vehicle) to a central processing system.
Existing predictive maintenance systems allow for early determinations of anticipated problems with operational devices. In these systems, product embedded information devices (PEIDs), which may be embodied as sensors, record the various operational aspects of a device. These PEIDs can record various factors, such as oil pressure, fluid levels, operating efficiency, time since previous repairs, locations, and other factors.
An existing predictive maintenance technique is a resident calculation technique in which an on-board computing system analyzes sensor data for a remote device. For example, a remote device may be an automobile or piece of heavy construction equipment that may travel to various locations over the course of a day.
Due to size and processing limitations, mobile devices do not have the capacity for sophisticated levels of computation. These systems can provide basic computing ability, which typically consists of comparing a sensor data reading to a chart of ranges. If the sensor data is outside of the range, the processing device may then provide a cursory notification. For example, if the oil level is below a threshold level, an oil light may be illuminated. These on-board systems are restricted to basic computations of a binary determination of whether a component's operation is either inside or outside of a predetermined operating range.
Another predictive maintenance technique includes using a back end processing system to perform various levels of calculations on the sensor data. This technique is typically limited to stationary devices because there is a dedicated communication path between the device and the back end processing system. It can be beneficial to communicate the data packet between the remote device and the back end processing system, but problems exist in the limited amount of data that can be exchanged therebetween. The back end processing system may be able perform a larger variety of processing operations on this data packet than available with the on-board processing system of the remote device. The back end processing system may also be able to additionally cross reference the sensor data with a large collection of information available in a networked environment, thereby providing a greater degree of analysis currently locally available on the remote device.
Limitations associated with the remote device communicating with the back end processing system include the remote device's location and ability to transmit data. The remote device may include the ability to transmit data over different mediums (e.g. WLAN, cellular, terrestrial, etc.) Each medium includes corresponding factors, such as transmission range, cost and available bandwidth. For example, a WLAN connection may have little cost and a high bandwidth, but a very limited transmission range. Conversely, the terrestrial connection may have extremely high costs, limited bandwidth and an almost universal range.
As the mobile device includes the ability to communicate across numerous transmission mediums, it is beneficial to determine which data should be sent over which transmission medium. Existing systems for prioritizing data transmissions address numerous factors, such as prioritizing the data based on service level agreements between a transmitting device and a receiving device. In this approach, a higher level service agreement provides improved priority in data packet transmissions. Another approach is adjusting a scheduling mechanism for different communication mediums, but this approach simply seeks to maximize the amount of data submitted when a particular communication medium is available and does not insure higher priority data is necessarily transmitted. Another approach includes scheduling communications based solely on the priority of the data to be sent across a single transmission medium and prioritizing the collective packets to be sent on this one medium. Therefore, the current techniques provide inflexible data transmission techniques without accounting for the type of data and the transmission medium availability.